Don Mitchell

writer / photographer / book designer / anthropologist

Five Years Later…

Right now I’m in the process of looking for a literary agent to represent my novel Mauka. Agents often ask for a “logline,” which is a one-sentence description. Here’s my long one: “When an unexpected letter asking forgiveness for a gang rape she’d kept secret for sixty years sends June Nakashima angrily back to Hilo…

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Deconstructing a myth in the bush

My story collection’s title (A Red Woman Was Crying) comes from a myth told by the Nagovisi people of Bougainville Island. The first chapter in the collection is the myth. In the myth and the deconstruction, reference is made to “slit gongs,” or “tui.” A RED WOMAN WAS CRYING Told by Tupuua, 1969 A red…

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Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton’s Murder

Shibai’s website In 2017, the 1969 murder of my fellow Harvard grad student and friend Jane Britton took over my life. (The Wikipedia article is incomplete and misleading in some ways, but it’s a useful summary.) The case had been cold for years. It was solved — after nearly half a century — but along…

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Script Carrera

I went out to the garage where I put some metal Diebold bank cabinets that I bought years ago at a surplus furniture place over on Main Street. They’d followed me around from house to house.  My marriage had disintegrated. I’d moved and was setting up my new place. What I was looking for in…

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